Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, packet data, and so on. Examples of such wireless networks include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) networks, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) networks, and Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) networks.
A user may utilize a wireless device (e.g., a cellular phone) to obtain various communication services from a wireless network. Each service may be satisfactorily provided to the user by ensuring that a specified quality of service (QoS) is achieved for that service. QoS may be quantified by different parameters for different services. For example, a voice service may require a relatively stringent delay and a certain minimum guaranteed data rate whereas a packet data service may require a certain target packet error rate.
The wireless device may exchange one or more traffic flows with the wireless network for the desired service(s). The QoS for each traffic flow may be defined by a set of QoS parameters. Different levels of QoS may be defined for different traffic flows to obtain the desired performance. Each traffic flow may also be associated with a set of one or more packet filters used to identify data packets belonging to that flow. Each packet filter may be formed by one or more filter parameters containing one or more fields of a network/transport layer header and/or one or more fields of a higher layer header. The packet filters may be used to segregate data packets into appropriate traffic flows so that each flow can be sent at the QoS level specified for that flow. A traffic flow may also have multiple subflows. In this case, a set of QoS parameters and a set of packet filters may be defined for each subflow to achieve the desired performance for that subflow.
It may be desirable to modify the packet filters. This may be the case, for example, if one or more subflows are added or deleted. As some examples, a new subflow may be added when a new user is added to a chat session in a voice chat application, or another streaming session may be added to an existing streaming QoS instance. New packet filters may be defined at the wireless device and sent to the wireless network. The wireless network may accept the new packet filters and may apply them to data packets sent to the wireless device. Modifying packet filters consumes valuable network resources to send the new packet filters over the air. The resource usage may be even more significant if there are restrictions on how packet filters can be modified, as described below.
There is therefore a need in the art for techniques to efficiently modify packet filters in a wireless network.